Pipsqueak (19 page)

The centerpiece of the downstairs lounge area is an overproportioned aluminum deco nude, and we sidled up next to it to wait, sip, and otherwise feign small talk for a half hour. Finally, from out of the mondo craniums and Watusi females, Peter showed—a sad specimen indeed, even in a tux. He’d chosen one of those futuristic Nehru tux shirts with a black tab where the tie should be. Despite the weak chin, lanky build, beetled brow, bald pate, and long, limp curls, it was his unctuous deportment that was his endearing quality, a human skin operated from within by a bucket of live, social-climbing squid. Dismissing my outstretched hand with a squirt of smarm, he promptly set about parading us around to various designers, personalities, and silver spooners. Peter introduced Angie’s jewelry to everybody. Angie and I were only introduced (by ourselves) to those well mannered enough to inquire. Facial fatigue was setting in from the amiable grin I’d plastered on my jaw, and the grind of ignominious social whoring had me praying for a time warp to the curtain call.

Praise the Lord! The lights flashed, and the horde trooped upstairs to the main lobby. A recognizable supermodel walked up the steps directly ahead of me with some swarthy, smug bastard on her arm. The libido is a lascivious janitor in a man’s boiler room, and I could hear the echo of mine weeping.

Programs in hand, we wended and hobnobbed our way down the aisle. Seat-seekers squeezed by those who stopped for a brief chat. We were prime aisle plugs, not that Peter noticed or cared.

Finally, in the middle of the eighth row from the back (orchestra), we sat down, with Peter between his date and Angie (flanked by his merchandise), and me between the date and a man I thankfully did not recognize. So I was three down from Angie. I guess Peter purposely kept me sitting away from Angie either so she could schmooze someone over on that side or just to flip me the bird. This was Angie’s big night, and I had already resigned myself to being highly cooperative.

The theater is oblong, and the gold ceiling is formed from overlapping arches zeroing in on the proscenium. Sort of like the bull’s-eye that Porky Pig pops out of and says, “That’s All, Folks!” Just on a titanic scale, like the cone of a
Saturn V
rocket booster. An orchestra pit fronted the stage, musicians’ heads and instruments peeking out like prairie dogs. They were plucking, honking, and tuning up. Television cameras, technicians, and a snake orgy of cables flanked the stage. Three tiers were overhead.

Since I was out of Peter’s conversation loop, I busied myself with the program. The first piece of info that riveted my attention was that this shindig was being broadcast live and digitally, though it would simultaneously be translated for analog transmission. I wondered what sinister construct the Church of Jive would build on that.

I remember looking around at that point and thinking that in this huge crowd of celebrities, with all the security in place, Angie and I couldn’t have been safer from the Church of Jive. And after all we’d been through, that was a very satisfying feeling.

I turned my attention back to the program. The evening’s schedule was thus: an opening Uptown Belle dance number, then an introduction by the Princess, followed by Special Musical Guest Voodoo Jive Daddy, followed by the glib and reticent magicians Glenn and Keller, then a brief slide presentation about the seriousness of head injuries by former President Gerald Ford, then . . . blah blah blah . . . and eventually the headliner act, Speed Wobble.

But there was a slip of white paper stuck into the program. I read it, then I picked my eyeballs up off the floor and read it again, just to be sure I wasn’t having a hallucination:

Due to an unavoidable last-minute cancellation, Voodoo Jive Daddy will be replaced by Scuppy Milner and the Swell Swingers.

Chapter 28

I
blinked, I squinted, but the slip of paper still read
Scuppy Milner and the Swell Swingers.
I turned to show Angie, but when I waved the little piece of paper at her, she only managed to tear herself away from Peter’s pontifications to give a hello wave back. I sat there, brain abuzz, staring at the slip of paper. My eyes zoomed in on the sponsors list:
Fab Form, Aurora Corp., Illinois
. Like a brick hitting my head, I remembered that plaque in Roger’s office, the testimonial of some kind from the Aurora Corporation. What did that stupid drink have to do with all this? My palms went sweaty, and I took a good look around for Roger Elk.

Bookerman, or his impostor, was one of the sponsors, and there’d likely be commercial breaks with Fab Form ads. The Swell Swingers were performing. All to a huge, nationwide audience.

The glowing lightning rod in my head arced voltage into the convulsing monster of realization. This was where the retros meant to use the tone spheres.

Were this a wedding, I suppose I could have stood up just before the the Swell Swingers hit the stage and said, “I object!” But if I were to make some sort of scene at Cinderella’s ball, especially if no danger was readily apparent, I would likely be arrested: quickly, quietly, and uselessly.

Well, Scuppy Milner was here someplace, and my guess was many of the other culprits were as well. It wouldn’t do any good for me to confront them. What, I’m going to walk into that vipers’ nest and announce that they’re all under arrest? The obvious move was to get Tsilzer down to the Savoy but quick.

I waved at Angie and mouthed, “I’ll be right back.”

A digital clock off to one side of the stage showed 8:51
P
.
M
. Nine minutes to airtime, probably a half hour or so to the Swell Swingers.

Swimming against the current of seat-seekers, I squirmed my way into the lobby, where a distracted usher waved me to the nearest pay phones, either outside the gents’ room downstairs or I could try the gents’ on the second mezzanine balcony. Well, there was still a jam of people coming upstairs, and the elevators were hectic, but traffic on the up staircase was nil, probably because of the velvet rope across it. I ducked under the rope and trotted up the spiral.

At the top, I found the remains of a private reception, the demeanor of the guests on hand leaning more toward white-haired contributors than members of the Screen Actors Guild. I didn’t pay them much mind, except I did a little two-step trying to maneuver around some woman in a tiara holding a script. Her bluish earrings were very familiar.

Naturally, I didn’t go out that evening with any change, but I punched my calling-card numbers, spoke to the operator, got the precinct number, and dialed again. I got through and asked for Detective Tsilzer. On hold, I sat down and waited, tapping a foot and hearing the orchestra start to play, probably an overture to get the audience seated. Biting a nail, I caught sight of a familiar figure trotting up the stairs in a tuxedo. I stood up suddenly, and he turned my way.

“What are you doing here?!” he demanded.

“What am I— What are you doing here? Do you know what’s going on?”

“Shhh!” Nicholas strode over, a quieting hand in the air. He had a tag on one lapel that said
CATERER
and on the other a stick-on name tag that said
RAOUL
. “Yeah, they’re going to pull something off tonight. Bookerman is here.”

“That’s not—”

“Sir?” A voice in my ear interrupted.

“Yes?” I said.

“Detective Tsilzer is in the field. Can I take a message?”

“Yes. Tell him Garth called, from Savoy Revue, and that he better get here quick. Emergency.” I hung up. That was next to useless.

“Who was that?” Nicholas prodded.

“The cops. Tsilzer. I called the detectives.”

Nicholas threw up his hands. “A stroke of genius, Garth. You left a message? He’ll probably get it tomorrow.” Nicholas put both palms gently on my chest and showed me a Svengali eye. “Garth, no more fun and games. Fourth quarter, third and long, two-minute warning. Tell me, quickly, what you know.”

Urgency had quashed any remaining qualms. “First off, the police say Bookerman is dead. So this impostor is working with Roger Elk to exploit some Russian tone spheres. They claim they can control minds with it. A lot of minds. Like, if they broadcast it tonight, they’ll—”

Nicholas’s eyes lit up. “Of course. What’s with the squirrel?”

“The final sphere, the one to complete the tone with the two others from Howlie and Possum, was in Pipsqueak’s head.”

“Ah! How . . . never mind, later.” He patted my chest.

“How’d you get in here, anyway?” I asked.

“With the caterers. And you?”

“With Angie and her famous designer boss.”

“No time for these details.” His eyes pinched shut with concentration. Nicholas’s head was back to normal size now, and close up I could see where he’d put makeup over the scratches. His eyes popped open. “What else?”

“Bookerman—or whoever he is—is the manufacturer of Fab Form, that awful health drink everybody loves. Made by Aurora Corporation, of Chicago. Roger Elk is Aurora’s attorney.” I snapped my fingers. “Hey. You know how that drink has become so popular in a short period of time? Popular starting from when Pipsqueak was stolen? They may have used the spheres to push their product. As a test. How else could something so vile—”

“Enough. They’re going to use the tone during the band’s number, right?”

“I dunno. Maybe. They might play it as part of a Fab Form ad.”

“Got a photo ID?”

“Like . . . what? A driver’s license?”

“No, no. Get your wallet.”

“What the—”

“Just give me your wallet.”

Amazingly, I did, and he quickly latched on to my video-rental card. “Perfect.” Nicholas rolled his own peel-and-stick name tag, stuck it on the back, and pressed the ID to my lapel. “That’s your stage pass.”

“Say what?”

“Everywhere we go, everywhere there’s somebody checking ID, gesture toward it and nod.”

“You’re nuts. Nobody will—”

“Just smile, nod, and wave two fingers at the ID. It’ll work, believe me. C’mon.”

“I’ve got to get back—”

“Back? What, are you kidding? We’ve got to get to Bookerman.”

“He’s not Bookerman.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. But we’ve got to grab those spheres. Or at least one of them. And that means we have to get backstage, or to the control booth. Let’s go.”

I stepped out of the phone cubby and headed for the stairs. “Sorry, Nicholas, but I’m not convinced these retros—or the naturopaths—aren’t just conspiracy cultists playing games.”

My burning determination to get downstairs, grab Angie, and hightail it out of the Savoy was suddenly doused. Nicholas and I stared down. At the bottom of the stairs was Roger’s thug Mortimer, who was staring back up at us, his crew cut bristling like the mane on a junkyard dog. The puppy looked ready for business, not games.

“Hold it right there, Carson.” He jabbed a log that was his finger at me, lumbering up the stairs.

I backpedaled to Nicholas, pointing. “Yow!” I didn’t have to elaborate.

Nicholas grabbed me by the lapel, jogging me down a corridor to a door marked
STAIRWELL
.

“Carson!” boomed from somewhere behind us.

We took three steps at a stride up to the top landing and heard a door below fly open. Darting through the door at the next floor, we were just in time to catch the Uptown Belles in leggy, spangled regalia, filing from their rehearsal space around the corner, away from us.

“They’re headed for the stage. Let’s follow.” Nicholas grabbed a wood doorstop idle on the floor and kicked it under the stairwell door. He tilted a nearby chair under the doorknob for good measure.

Size-fifteen shoes tromped up the stairs.

“How’ll we get backstage? Who are we, what will we say?” I whispered.

Even before I finished talking, and even before the door next to us strained from the weight of Mortimer’s bulk, Nicholas’s eye was caught by a glass case on the wall. He pulled a gun.

Not a firearm-type gun but, as I quickly observed, a lock-pick pistol, which looks like a miniature, truncated caulking gun but tipped with a pair of metal prongs. “A little tool of the trade,” Nicholas said with a wink.

As Mortimer’s footsteps boomed back downstairs, Nicholas made quick work of the lock and swung open the case.

“That’s . . . that’s Meat Loaf’s!” I gawked.

“Whatever.” Nicholas lifted out the black and red electric guitar, emblazoned with the
Bat Out of Hell
album cover and Meat Loaf’s signature. “The band forgot their guitar player. Skippy needs his guitar man. You.” Nicholas thrust the guitar into my hands and prodded me onward.

“
Scuppy,
Scuppy Milner,” I corrected.

We caught up with the rear of the Uptown Belle train leaving the rehearsal space. Toting ostrich-feather fans, collectively they resembled a giant pink caterpillar trotting down the hall. The prop master was at the end of the caterpillar. He heard our approach and turned to look. This cardiganed man with orange hair, bifocals, and ashen, wrinkled face saw that we weren’t one of the statuesque pinup gals and gave us a hound-dog stare.

Guitar held high, we smiled, doing our best to keep pace with the long, curvaceous legs ahead.

Mr. Prop, unfazed by us, turned his sad eyes back on the girls, uttering a mordant, unprovoked epithet:
“Musicians!”

“Mortimer will sound the alarm! They’ll be looking for us when we get down there,” I rasped over my shoulder at Nicholas. I noticed that he managed to keep me ahead of him. To use me as a shield?

In a stairwell going down, the taps on the girls’ shoes clacked on the concrete steps like so many billiard balls, so we couldn’t hear if any footsteps were coming down behind us. But we made it down to the stage level, following the girls like part of their entourage.

For all the refinements elsewhere in Savoy Revue, backstage looked like any other backstage, except vast. That is to say, something like a well-frequented basement or garage, masonry walls hung with electrical boxes, ropes, winches, cables, and pipes. It was dark and crowded with performers and techies preparing for curtain. So many people were whispering in the gloom that the collective hiss was like a cobra convention. A stage coordinator eyed us over her clipboard, but before she got the chance to question us, Nicholas pulled me around a corner into a narrow side hall lined with cubicles and doors. Halfway down we saw the Cummerbund Squad chatting calmly in a pool of light outside a door with a star on it. They were in matching plaid tuxes and didn’t seem on the alert.

“Keep moving, Garth!” Nicholas growled.

“Where are we going?”

“I dunno, but if you stop, they’ll notice. It’ll look suspicious. Put these on.” A pair of spectacles was shoved in my free hand. Nicholas’s faux ones without the glass. I slipped them on and hoped that my epoxy-strength hair gel would complete the disguise. Last time I saw the Cummerbunds, I was in retro garb with well-frazzled hair.

As we drew near, Nicholas whispered something inaudible, and there was no time to get a clear translation. So as we approached the Cummerbunds, they drew apart to let us pass. I felt Nicholas’s hand on my elbow, and he yanked me to a stop in front of one of the Plaid Four.

Nicholas wheeled around. “Excushe me, but thish idiot from the orchestra needsh a guitar string.” Nicholas had shoved Kleenex inside his upper lip and cheeks, and his eyes were wide as pie pans. “
Musicians!
Now he wantsh to see whether one of yoush Swingers gots one he cansh borrow? Hmm?”

They looked at Nicholas like a gang of country-club golf pros encountering the groundskeeper’s assistant. My face went prickly. Nicholas’s aping was way over the top, I thought, and surely we were dead meat.

Cummerbund #1 snorted at Nicholas, eyed my guitar, and gave me the once-over. I gulped.

“Nice guitar. I don’t see any broken strings.”

“Almost broken,” I blurted. “Up here. You can’t see. It’s, uh, wound around the peg. It’ll break soon as I start to strum.” I was nodding furiously.

“Musiciansh!” Nicholas threw up his hands, nodding at the other Cummerbunds in nonexistent commiseration.

Cummerbund #1 rolled his eyes, letting them come to rest on Nicholas. He leaned on the door and turned the knob. “This guy needs a guitar string. Got any?”

The Swell Swingers were decked out in baggy blue sharkskin suits, black shirts, and purple ties. Some sat at lighted mirrors, primping. Others sat backward on folding chairs in the middle of the room, smoking and chatting. The walls were yellow, the furnishings Spartan and strewn with instrument cases. Scuppy was not there.

A Swinger with a small beard, flat-crowned fedora (brim up), and sharp blue eyes stood up from the center of the room. He started backing toward an open guitar case. “Which string?”

“Oh. Well, it’s the, uh . . . G-string, of course.”

A locker-room laugh bounced around the Swingers, and a rivulet of sweat slalomed down my back. Comments like “Sure,” “I
like
that string,” and “Hubba-hubba” erupted from the other musicians.